Music as neuropscyhotherapy?

Editors summary:

Why do human beings enjoy music? Salimpoor et al. combined behavioral economics with brain scanning to explore how a piece of music is considered rewarding to an individual when it is heard for the first time. They discovered that neural activity in the mesolimbic striatum during listening to a novel piece of music was the best predictor of the money listeners were willing to spend on buying the piece. These observations implicate sensory cortical areas in reward processing, which the authors attribute to the aesthetic nature of the judgment.

Salimpoor et al

Science 12 April 2013:

Vol. 340

no. 6129

pp. 216-219

Abstract: “We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate neural processes when music gains reward value the first time it is heard. The degree of activity in the mesolimbic striatal regions, especially the nucleus accumbens, during music listening was the best predictor of the amount listeners were willing to spend on previously unheard music in an auction paradigm. Importantly, the auditory cortices, amygdala, and ventromedial prefrontal regions showed increased activity during listening conditions requiring valuation, but did not predict reward value, which was instead predicted by increasing functional connectivity of these regions with the nucleus accumbens as the reward value increased. Thus, aesthetic rewards arise from the interaction between mesolimbic reward circuitry and cortical networks involved in perceptual analysis and valuation.”

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2 Comments

Since I don’t have access to the entire article, I’m wondering what the author takes from this finding. If I knew nothing about the brain, I’d say when a person listens to a piece of music they enjoy, they are both evaluating the music and experiencing pleasure, and the more pleasure they experience the more likely they are to pay for this music so they can hear it again. So my questions are twofold: 1) What does our knowing about the brain add to our understanding of what is going on, beyond what self- and other-observation already tells us?; and 2) What, if anything, might we take from this as regards the practice of psychotherapy?

When playing or singing, it’s hard to do something else at the same time (Gestalt psychology). Being present, being able to focus on the present and not worry about anything else. A Cochrane metastudy published in 2011 show that music interventions relieved anxiety and pain in cancer patients (Bradt, et al, 2011. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD006911.pub2.)

The researchers analyzed 30 scientific studies on music therapy with more than 1800 cancer patients. 64 percent of the patients who received music therapy had reduced anxiety and pain. The corresponding figure in a control group that received traditional treatment without music, was only 35 percent. On average anxiety decreased by 20 percent for those who received music or got to meet a music therapist.

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